True freedom is walking away

How we stepped out of the system we were feeding

- by THE NOMAD FAMILY

THERE comes a point when you realise that no amount of fighting will ever fix a system that was never built for freedom.

For us, that moment came when we stopped trying to patch holes in a sinking ship and decided to build our own boat. We're a small family; myself, my wife Sam and our son Dylan, who chose to step away from almost every structure that once defined our lives: school, work, mortgages, banks, and the illusion of safety through systems. We began living by one simple principle: we will no longer feed the systems that feed on us.

It didn't happen overnight. It began with questions. Why must our child learn what a curriculum dictates? Why do we spend our best hours working to sustain a life that never feels our own? Each answer peeled away another layer of conditioning, and that's when the real journey began.

Most people think unschooling is about education. But at its core, unschooling, and its twin, deschooling, are lifelong processes of shedding the conditioning that the systems have placed upon us. It's not only for children; it's for every adult who's ever been told who to be, what to believe, and how to live.

We began by unschooling Dylan, but soon realised we were unschooling ourselves. Every rule, every 'should', every external authority had to be questioned. We saw how deeply we'd been shaped by schools, workplaces, banks, and even the quiet expectations of society.